Another Mass Shooting And No One Blinks

Gold Member

·[FONT=&quot]Littleton[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Colorado, April 1999: Two teenage boys shoot and kill 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School before killing themselves.
[/FONT]·[FONT=&quot]Atlanta[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Georgia[/FONT][FONT=&quot], July 1999: A stock market day trader goes on a day-long shooting rampage, killing 12 people including his wife and two children before taking his own life.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Fort Worth[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Texas[/FONT][FONT=&quot], September 1999: A gunman opens fire at a prayer service, killing six people before committing suicide.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Washington[/FONT][FONT=&quot], October 2002: A series of sniper-style shootings, some carried out from the boot of a car, claims 10 lives, mostly in the Washington area. Many of the attacks were carried out with a semi-automatic assault rifle.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Chicago[/FONT][FONT=&quot], August 2003: A worker who was laid off shoots and kills six of his former co-workers with a semi-automatic pistol. The shooter had a lengthy arrest record, including for weapons offences.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Birchwood[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Wisconsin[/FONT][FONT=&quot], November 2004: A hunter opens fire with an SKS assault rifle, killing six other hunters and wounding two after an argument.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Brookfield[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Wisconsin[/FONT][FONT=&quot], March 2005: A man fires 22 rounds during a church service, killing seven people.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, October 2006: A truck driver armed with two rifles, a semi-automatic handgun and 600 rounds of ammunition kills five schoolgirls execution-style in an Amish schoolhouse, and seriously wounds six others before shooting himself.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Blacksburg[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Virginia, April 2007: A student shoots 47 people at Virginia Tech, killing 32 before he commits suicide, in the deadliest mass shooting in the United States.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Omaha[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Nebraska[/FONT][FONT=&quot], December 2007: Nine people are killed and five others injured after a 20-year-old shooter armed with a military-style assault rifle attacks shoppers in a mall.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Carnation, Washington, December 2007: A woman and her boyfriend shoot dead six members of her family, including two children, ages three and six, on Christmas Eve, using large-caliber pistols.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Chicago[/FONT][FONT=&quot], February 2008: Six women are tied-up and shot at a suburban clothing store. Five of the women die. The gunman has not been found.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]DeKalb[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Illinois, February 2008: A man opens fire in a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University, killing five students and wounding 16 before turning his weapon on himself.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Alger[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Washington[/FONT][FONT=&quot], September 2008: A mentally ill man who had been released from jail a month earlier shoots eight people, killing six.
[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Covina[/FONT][FONT=&quot], California[/FONT][FONT=&quot], December 2008: A man dressed in a Santa Claus suit opens fire at a family Christmas party at his ex-wife's home and then sets fire to the house. Nine people are killed in the home. The gunman later kills himself.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Geneva[/FONT][FONT=&quot] County and Coffee County, Alabama, March 12 2009: In a shooting spree that tears through several towns, a 28-year-old out-of-work man kills 10 people, including his mother and a toddler.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]North Carolina[/FONT][FONT=&quot], March 29, 2009: A heavily-armed gunman shoots dead eight people, many elderly and sick patients, in a North Carolina nursing home.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Santa Clara[/FONT][FONT=&quot], California, March 30, 2009: Six people are shot dead in an apparent murder-suicide at a home in an upscale Silicon Valley neighbourhood.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Binghamton[/FONT][FONT=&quot], New York, April 3, 2009: Up to 13 people are killed as a gunman goes on a rampage at a civic centre in the town of Binghamton.[/FONT]

·[FONT=&quot]Graham[/FONT][FONT=&quot], Washington[/FONT][FONT=&quot] State, April 5, 2009: James Harrison, 34, killed his five children (aged between seven and 16) inside his mobile home, then drove to a nearby casino and shot himself inside his car, police said.[/FONT]

And what do you propose we do besides shake our heads? We've known the military has had a poor track record with caring for combat vets and particularly so in psychiatry. If this guy is an example of the kind of psychiatrist the army has, it's no wonder they're not getting the help they need.

While I agree in general that the availability of guns is out of hand... this particular incident was among military personnel on a military base. In short it was in a place which will probably always be - and should be - well armed. Whether a civilian should be able to go to a gun show parking lot and buy a suitcase full of 9mm pistols is another story. One which is pretty indefensible.

Gold Member

Who knows the answer? I know these mass shootings didn't happen when I was growing up. And now they happen all the time. Are we a more violent society now? What is the problem now that the answer is a killing spree? It doesn't happen in other countries even in countries where guns are readily available.

And what do you propose we do besides shake our heads? We've known the military has had a poor track record with caring for combat vets and particularly so in psychiatry. If this guy is an example of the kind of psychiatrist the army has, it's no wonder they're not getting the help they need.

Click to expand...

As a veteran, I take exception at you blaming the military for this tragedy. No one is to blame for this but the gunman. He could have simply ended his own life if things were that bad, but he wanted to take as many people with him as he could, it seems.

You have never served a day in uniform, I suspect, or you wouldn't so hap-handedly automatically decry the military. No one is more devastated by this massacre than those serving on bases all around the world. And just like any time before, the Army will take care of its own.

Please don't besmirch the honorable men and women in our armed forces who stand up for your right to do so!

An Army psychiatrist about to be deployed to combat zones overseas killed 12 soldiers and wounded 31 others on Thursday afternoon at Fort Hood in Texas, the authorities said. The gunman, who was identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was shot by police forces and is being treated at a local hospital and in stable condition. Earlier reports that the suspect had been killed turned out to be wrong, said Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, the commanding officer at Fort Hood. Mr. Hasan, 39, who had been promoted in May and previously worked at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, according to Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison. Her spokesman, Jeff Sadoski, said Major Hasan was upset about his pending deployment.

Click to expand...

Carrying two guns, one a semiautomatic weapon and neither of them military-issued, Mr. Hasan began firing around 1:30 p.m. central time at a deployment center where soldiers received last-minute medical attention and instructions before being shipped out overseas, Mr. Cone said. Describing the scene of the shooting, he called it a very enclosed area and said that soldiers from a number of units across Fort Hood where there at the time of the shooting. Mr. Hasan opened fire, and due to the quick response of the police forces, he was subdued, the general said. One of the first responders, he added, was a female officer who shot Mr. Hasan and suffered wounds herself but survived and is in stable condition. Mr. Hassan, who was shot several times, was listed in stable condition at a local hospital and was not talking to investigators, Mr. Cone said.

Click to expand...

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Mr. Hasans parents were born in Jordan. The newspaper quoted Representative Michael McCaul of Austin, who has been briefed on the shootings at Fort Hood, as saying that Mr. Hasan took a lot of advanced training in shooting. Fort Hood, located about halfway between Austin and Waco, is home to about 52,000 troops as of earlier this year. Fort Hood has lost more troops in the war in Iraq than any other U.S. home base. The base was the site today of the annual college graduation ceremonies for soldiers and family members who have not had the opportunity to participate in college commencement exercises during the past year because of deployment, according to the Fort Hood Sentinel. Around Killeen, near the base, state troopers could be seen parked on ridges overlooking the two main highways that cut through town. In the residential areas, moving cars were the only sign of life. Schools had been put on lockdown earlier in the day, and later, playgrounds and front yards were devoid of people.

As a veteran, I take exception at you blaming the military for this tragedy. No one is to blame for this but the gunman. He could have simply ended his own life if things were that bad, but he wanted to take as many people with him as he could, it seems.

You have never served a day in uniform, I suspect, or you wouldn't so hap-handedly automatically decry the military. No one is more devastated by this massacre than those serving on bases all around the world. And just like any time before, the Army will take care of its own.

Please don't besmirch the honorable men and women in our armed forces who stand up for your right to do so!

Click to expand...

Oh get off the tired soapbox. We've heard it all before. As soon as someone criticizes the military it turns into a supposed condemnation of the entire system and a besmirchment of everyone serving.

Before you continue to jump to conclusions please note I confined my criticism to the mental health care of those currently serving though I should also extend that to the VA. The fact is that care IS poor and it should be improved. That's the situation with physical and mental health care. If anything, I am critical of the DoD and the VA for not providing the level of care I believe that active and retired personnel deserve. The shooter had poor performance records and was still being sent to Iraq when he probably should have been let go or busted down in rank. One psychiatrist for every 750 personnel is not acceptable to me when we're continually demanding these people do tour after tour after tour. Some personnel are seeing fifth and sixth tours! They NEED counseling, they NEED to learn how to cope with returning to civilian life, they NEED proper health care while in the field and that includes mental health care. I do not want to see a generation of soldiers forgotten as they were after Vietnam. That was inexcusable:

At least 128 soldiers committed suicide in 2008, the Army said Thursday. And the final count is likely to be even higher because 15 more suspicious deaths are still being investigated.

"Why do the numbers keep going up? We cannot tell you," said Army Secretary Pete Geren. "We can tell you that across the Army we're committed to doing everything we can to address the problem."

The new suicide figure compares with 115 in 2007 and 102 in 2006 and is the highest since current record-keeping began in 1980. Officials expect the deaths to amount to a rate of 20.2 per 100,000 soldiers, which is higher than the civilian rate _ when adjusted to reflect the Army's younger and male-heavy demographics _ for the first time in the same period of record-keeping.

Officials have said that troops are under unprecedented stress because of repeated and long tours of duty due to the simultaneous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. -AP

It's tragic, but there are around 45 murders a day in the united states, most of which we never hear about. I think that mass shootings are different significantly more for their novel and 'stimulative' nature than they are for their level of tragedy. This asshole killed 12 people, that's terrible. But we'll hear about it for weeks and in the meantime hundreds more americans will be murdered without the news ever reaching our ears. And if they do reach our ears, we won't think they're exciting enough to get worried about.

Murders happen, mass killings make up a very small proportion of them. It isn't as big of a deal as the news media and politicians would like us to believe.

As a veteran, I take exception at you blaming the military for this tragedy.

Click to expand...

It happened on a military base and was perpetrated by a military officer. I didn't see that the poster blamed the military but you'd have to agree there's some degree of culpability in ensuring the safety of base personnel and the mental health of its soldiers.

Read the comment again and you'll find that the post was advocating for better care of military vets. If you want to argue against your own best interests then feel free. But even the military acknowledges it is struggling to cope with the rising number of suicides and incidences of violence among returning war vets.

PS - it is almost always disingenuous to shout someone down for a critique of the military by claiming that it's the military which defends your right to critique... the military...

Oh get off the tired soapbox. We've heard it all before. As soon as someone criticizes the military it turns into a supposed condemnation of the entire system and a besmirchment of everyone serving.

Before you continue to jump to conclusions please note I confined my criticism to the mental health care of those currently serving though I should also extend that to the VA. The fact is that care IS poor and it should be improved. That's the situation with physical and mental health care. If anything, I am critical of the DoD and the VA for not providing the level of care I believe that active and retired personnel deserve. The shooter had poor performance records and was still being sent to Iraq when he probably should have been let go or busted down in rank. One psychiatrist for every 750 personnel is not acceptable to me when we're continually demanding these people do tour after tour after tour. Some personnel are seeing fifth and sixth tours! They NEED counseling, they NEED to learn how to cope with returning to civilian life, they NEED proper health care while in the field and that includes mental health care. I do not want to see a generation of soldiers forgotten as they were after Vietnam. That was inexcusable:

When we do not address mental health care, and this country is abysmal at it because we believe a pill and a pat on the back is all you need to feel good, shit like this happens.

Click to expand...

Va healthcare poor? and yet you want a government run heathcare sytem for everyone? what makes you think it will be different? if they shit on people that defened the country how will they tret the losers that just want to suck on the governments tit?

Va healthcare poor? and yet you want a government run heathcare sytem for everyone? what makes you think it will be different? if they shit on people that defened the country how will they tret the losers that just want to suck on the governments tit?

Click to expand...

If you collect unemployment or use medicare, are you sucking on the governmental teat?